Comment on "Material Evidence of a 38 MeV Boson"

Abstract

In the recent preprint 1202.1739 it was claimed that preliminary data presented by COMPASS at recent conferences confirm the existence of a resonant state of mass 38 MeV decaying to two photons. This claim was made based on structures observed in two-photon mass distributions which however were shown only to demonstrate the purity and mass resolution of the {\pi}0 and {\eta} signals. The additional structures are understood as remnants of secondary interactions inside the COMPASS spectrometer. Therefore, the COMPASS data do not confirm the existence of this state.